Semiotica

Semiotica is the official journal of the IASS-AIS. It was edited by Thomas A. Sebeok from its foundation until he passed away on December 21, 2001, when he was followed by Jean Umiker-Seeok. The new Editor-in-Chief is Marcel Danesi (E-mail: marcel.danesi@utoronto.ca ). Semiotica is published by Mouton (which was at first an independent Dutch publisher, and today is a division of Walter de Gruyter, Berlin). The very first issue appeared in 1969. The cover of the Volume 1 issues described the editorial line:

“SEMIOTICA, with a strictly scientific orientation, plans to publish studies in all field in which the notion of signs is or can be recognized and discussed, such as logic, linguistics, information theory, analysis of social relationships, types of discourse (in epistemology, anthropology, psychoanalysis, etc.), poetics, esthetics in the arts. We invite contributions from all who are interested in developing semiotic concepts within the lines of the scientific approach we wish to encourage.”

Starting with a quarterly, the journal is now published in five volumes of two double issues each with almost 2,000 pp. per year.

In the list of members of the first editorial committee we find names like Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Juri M. Lotman, Nicolas Ruwet, Meyer Shapiro, and Hansjakob Seiler.

Apart from articles, Semiotica also publishes “Review Articles”, which not merely review books, but thoroughly explore a special topic of the publication. Thus far, Semiotica has been indexed four times, the last one is the “Index to Semiotica Vols. 1-100 (1969-1994)” (on 795pp. all articles of 25 years of Semiotica can be looked up by the author, the title, the reviewed books; in addition, there is a subject index in three parts: persons, geographic names and scientific fields).

Although authors sometimeshave to wait rather long for their articles to appear, they are awarded not only with a first rate publication, but can be — literally — awarded; in 1981, the Mouton d’Or prize was created for the year’s best article. For a list of Award Winners go to the Mouton de Gruyter website.

The guideline for authors can be downloaded in English and in French here.

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